The State Duma will consider a bill “On traditional religious organizations in
the Russian Federation” this spring. The bill has been developed by Deputy
Chairman of the Committee for public associations and religious organizations
Alexander Chuyev. One of the bill’s main objectives is to prevent activation of
numerous sects, non-traditional religious and pseudo-religious organizations
and increase the support to traditional religions. As of now, the bill has been
submitted for public consideration, sent to the state authority structures and
different public and political organizations.
According to the new bill, the notion “a traditional confession” can be applied
to the organizations that have been active for not less than 80 years already
and that unite more than one million of the faithful. Such organizations are to
be an integral part of Russia’s historical legacy, like Orthodoxy, Christianity
(other Christian religions are meant), Islam, Buddhism and Judaism. At the
initial stage these five confessions are to be ranked among the traditional
ones.
Also the bill provides for creation of a federal commission for support to the
traditional religions attached to the President. The commission will consider
further increase of the list; it will be authorized to confer the status of
traditional religions to other religious organizations.
The bill provides for a stipulation: religion may have a different traditional
status. So, a traditional religion of “some separate nation” is to have not one
million, but not less than 100,000 followers.
The commission will be responsible for determining, whether a new candidate to
be a traditional religion is a part of Russia’s historical, cultural and
religious legacy. It is a really hard task, as it is impossible to draw such
conclusions on the ground of the facts, figures and statements submitted by the
organizations.
Indeed, the necessity for creation of such a law to regulate the relations
between the church and the state has been pressing for a long period already.
It is perfectly clear now that the law “On liberty of conscience and religions”
is not sufficient for Russia now. The state is to stimulate traditional
religious associations (Orthodoxy, first of all) to resist the religious
extremism and numerous preachers and missionaries who invade Russia from the
West.
How can the traditional confessions be supported? First of all, the confessions
are to be given an opportunity of free appearance in the mass media, to be
allowed to teach the fundamentals of their believes at schools and to be
exempted from income tax and value-added tax. The new bill provides for every condition
mentioned above.
It is clear that not all parliamentarians are to support the bill “On
traditional religious organizations in the Russian Federation”. For example,
famous liberals from the Union of Right-wing forces are to vote against the
bill. Irina Khakamada, a deputy from the Union of Right-wing forces, thinks the
bill is “not only bad, but even dangerous”.
The new bill has already given rise to apprehensions that it will contradict
the Constitution, that none of the religions may get the status of public on
the territory of “the secular state”, etc. Such is the opinion of co-chairman
of the Russian mufti council Nafigulla Ashirov. He told in a wireless
interview, “the law on a secular state and detachment of the church meets
Russia’s federative structure, its history and today’s democratic line.” One of
the authors of the Constitution in force, ex-deputy of the State Duma Viktor
Sheinis shares the opinion; he says, “the church is gradually attacking the
secular state.”
But the adversaries of the bill simply use substitution of the notions: they
see what they want to see. But the bill provides only for the state’s
stimulation, protection and support to the traditional religious organizations.
No “status of a public religion”, that is also to be obligatory for everyone,
is to be applied to confessions.
Sergey Yugov
PRAVDA.Ru